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Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002 43 Vassar St., Cambridge, MA 02139

Speaker: Alexander Borst, Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Intelligence, Martinsried, Germany

Abstract: Detecting the direction of image motion is important for visual navigation, predator avoidance and prey capture, and thus essential for the survival of all animals that have eyes. However, the direction of motion is not explicitly represented at the level of the photoreceptors: it rather needs to be computed by subsequent neural circuits. The exact nature of this process represents a classic example of neural computation and has been a longstanding question in the field. Our results obtained in the fruit fly Drosophila demonstrate that the local direction of motion is computed in two parallel ON and OFF pathways. Within each pathway, a retinotopic array of four direction-selective T4 (ON) and T5 (OFF) cells represents the four Cartesian components of local motion vectors (leftward, rightward, upward, downward). Since none of the presynaptic neurons is directionally selective, direction selectivity first emerges within T4 and T5 cells. Our present research focuses on the cellular and biophysical mechanisms by which the direction of image motion is computed in these neurons.

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Quest | CBMM Seminar Series: How fly neurons compute the direction of visual motion

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Speaker: Alexander Borst, Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Intelligence, Martinsried, Germany Abstract: Detecting the direction of image motion is important for visual navigation, predator avoidance and prey capture, and thus essential for the survival of all animals that have eyes.

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Rajesh P. N. Rao is the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He is also the co-Director of the Center for Neurotechnology (CNT), Adjunct Professor in the Bioengineering department, and faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UW. He directs the Neural Systems Laboratory located in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. He is an IEEE Fellow and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholar award, an NSF CAREER award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a Sloan Faculty Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. His research interests span computational neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence. His other interests include the ancient Indus script and classical Indian paintings.
Talk Title:
A sensory-motor theory of the neocortex based on active predictive coding
Abstract:
Recent neurophysiological experiments indicate that almost all cortical areas, even those traditionally labelled as primary sensory cortices, are modulated by upcoming actions. Parallel evidence from neuroanatomical studies points to major outputs from layer 5 neurons across cortical areas to subcortical motor centers. To account for these findings, we propose that the neocortex implements active predictive coding (APC), a form of predictive coding that combines actions and hierarchical sensory-motor dynamics. We provide examples from simulations illustrating how the same APC architecture can solve problems that seem very different from each other: (1) how do we recognize an object and its parts using eye movements? (2) why does perception seem stable despite eye movements? (3) how do we learn compositional representations, e.g., part-whole hierarchies, and nested reference frames? (4) how do we plan actions in a complex domain by composing sequences of sub-goals and simpler actions, and (5) how do we form episodic memories of our sensory-motor experiences and learn abstract concepts such as a family tree? The APC model suggests computational roles for interlaminar connections within a cortical area as well as possible roles for cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical connections.

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McGovern Institute Special Seminar: Rajesh Rao

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Rajesh P. N. Rao is the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He is also the co-Director of the Center for Neurotechnology (CNT), Adjunct Professor in the Bioengineering department, and faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UW.

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Chemical Biology Seminar (Richard Drake, Medical University of South Carolina): Clinical glycomics: advancements in multimodal spatial analyses of tissues, cells, and biofluids